


A Rose from Any Other Branch

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: Twisted Branches [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different Parents, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: In which Celebrian is the daughter of Curufin, Celebrimbor is the son of Aredhel, Maeglin is the son of Turgon, Idril is the daughter of Orodreth, Finduilas is the daughter of Galadriel, and Gil-Galad is the son Aegnor and Andreth, probably.This changes some things, but not nearly as much as you might think.
Relationships: Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel, Elrond Peredhel & Ereinion Gil-galad
Series: Twisted Branches [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671526
Comments: 20
Kudos: 171





	A Rose from Any Other Branch

**Author's Note:**

> In which everyone mostly still ends up doomed, but they all get to enjoy a slightly different flavor of it.
> 
> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> (This used to be a bullet point fic. I reformatted it because I don't quite like the way bullet point fics look on A03, but the content remains the same.)

Idril is the only daughter of Orodreth, and the apple of his eye. She is also the light of Turin’s the moment he sees her, but she is decidedly not interested.

He’s human, which is fascinating, but frankly she had liked Beren better. Even despite everything he’d already been through, Beren had been much more cheerful and had much less - drama.

Idril is not inherently opposed to the bridge, but she thinks that if there’s going to be such an obvious way in, they need a smaller, far more hidden way out. Just in case.

By the time Glaurung breaks through the gates, Idril is already leading as many of her people as she can far, far away. Turin never does find out just what happened to her.

She is not the only of her family to escape. There is also her cousin, Celebrian, and, of course, Gil-Galad, who is not, despite what some people insist on whispering, her brother. He’s her cousin, a closer cousin than Celebrian, even, because Gil-Galad is her uncle’s son, and Celebrian is her … half second cousin’s daughter? She thinks? 

She is far more interested in the branches of tunnels than those of her overburdened family tree.

Gil-Galad had shown up with Beren, actually, half-dead from orc poison but still determinedly limping along. 

“We’re the last left,” Gil-Galad had said grimly in response to Uncle Finrod’s questions, and then he had collapsed. 

The healer’s examination had revealed two things:

One, he would recover, though not soon enough to join the quest due to the haste made necessary by the sudden turmoil the city had been thrust into. 

(Gil-Galad had protested this furiously.)

And two, he had slightly pointed ears and a slight but definitely noticeable resemblance to Uncle Aegnor.

Beren had barely left his bedside. “He’s my uncle,” he told Finrod quietly. “Well, my cousin really, but he’s a bit older than my father - was, and so -“ 

He did not look old enough to be older than Beren’s father. He didn’t look older than Beren at all.

“Your cousin by way of the lady Andreth, by any chance?” Finrod had asked in a pained voice.

Why had they never told him, why had they not trusted him with this when he could have helped - 

“What of it?” Gil-Galad had growled from his sickbed, fire that Finrod very much suspected he had inherited from his mother in his eyes. 

And it hurt to do it, but he could not press, not now, so he backed down and said, “Nothing at all,” and told himself there would be time later. 

Of course, there never was. 

That relationship with Beren was why there was … tension … between him and Celebrian. 

She was, after all, the daughter of one of the men who had most directly opposed him. 

Feanor’s first and only grandchild had also been the first girl after seven boys born into the family line. 

She had been adored before she had even been born, the center of a fierce circle of family love from her first breath. Cosseted and protected and surrounded by teachers eager to teach her anything she wanted to learn. 

When she had wanted to learn how to use the beautiful swords her father had taught her how to make, he hadn’t dreamed of denying her. 

He had wept when he found her after Alqualonde, sitting still and shocked as she looked down at her red stained blade. 

He still hadn’t regretted it. Though they’d all hoped it would be the last time they would slay kin, they’d known it would not be the last they saw battle, and he would do anything, _anything,_ if it meant she would be even slightly more safe. 

(Her anger over what he’d done to Finrod was real, though it had faltered when she had seen the fire and agony of the Oath in his eyes. The argument that had made her furious enough to forswear them all had also been real - on her part. On his - ) 

(He knew exactly what he was doing, even though he would have rather cut off his own hands than done it.) 

(But anything, anything, if it might cut her free from his doom and make her safe.) 

(Celebrian does not know this at the time. But she wonders, later.) 

Celebrian is not, of course, responsible for her father’s sins. But she is quiet when others speak of him, quiet and expressionless in a way she almost never is, and Gli-Galad does not quite trust her. 

Despite all this, they work together well, and when they make it to the coast, they begin to build a city. A new haven, of sorts, so that’s what the call it: The Haven of Sirion. 

Tuor, meanwhile, has made it to Gondolin where he finds a king that hears his warnings but will not heed them and two princes that listen but prepare to fight instead of flee. 

Maeglin, he learns quickly, is the king’s son. According to the whispers, he used to be friendly and cheerful, but his mother’s death on the Ice quieted him to a dark solemnity. His closest - and, though he hesitates to say it of a prince, perhaps only real - friend appears to be his cousin, Celebrimbor.

Tuor has no trouble finding out Celebrimbor’s history. Even all these years later, it is the primest piece of gossip in the city: How his mother ran away, how she came back with a son, how his father tried to murder him but killed his mother instead by mistake -

Despite the gossip and despite the tragedy, Celebrimbor is determinedly friendly, and he makes a point of befriending Tuor, despite Tuor’s complete lack of ability with the smith work that both princes seem to be devoted to. Maeglin eyes him warily at first, but he warms to Tuor slowly.

Then Celebrimbor goes on a routine trip for more ore from the surrounding hills, and he doesn’t come back.

(“Tell my master where it is,” Sauron hisses, but though they can make him scream and weep, they cannot make him a traitor to his kin, he cannot tell them, he _must not tell them -_ )  
(To his credit, he does not. But Morgoth has seen where Hurin wandered in his attempt to return to Gondolin, and he knows where his orcs found Celebrimbor; he has the general area now, and Gondolin surely cannot hide from him forever.)

(Unfortunately, he’s right.)

Maeglin demands that his father allow him to gather search parties to try and recover Celebrimbor, but Turgon refuses. Instead, the city is locked down as it finally begins in earnest to prepare for war.

War comes. And when it does, Celebrimbor’s body is the war banner Morgoth’s armies carry.

Maeglin goes white with fury.

“Get them out,” he tells Tuor, all their plans abandoned. “Follow him!” He shouts to the noncombatants they were supposed to lead out together, and then Maeglin joins the futile charge against the foe.

Tuor wants to follow him, to stop him, but he’s surrounded by people who can’t cut their way out on their own, so he does what he has to do. There is only one way out of the city - and what he wouldn’t give for another one now - so they must hide and wait for the fight to be led away as best it can be before they cut their way, step by bloodstained step.

(Glorfindel is the highest ranking elf that makes it out alive. Tuor assumes that he will take over, but elves are, apparently, ridiculously loyal, and Glorfindel wasn’t the one their prince had pointed at.)

(And then Glorfindel falls fighting the balrog, and it’s all a moot point, so Tuor leads them grimly on.)

It is not love at first sight when he sees Idril at Sirion. It is love at _this is the third night we have collapsed in exhaustion at the same table, and I have no idea how we’re going to get them out of this, do you?_

Earendil is born a year later.

Celebrian stays at Sirion until Doriath, and then it becomes impossible. 

She is not allowed to be angry. She knows that.

She is not allowed to look at the refugees streaming in and wonder, _Are you the one that killed my father? Are you the one that killed my uncles?_

She is not allowed to collapse crying when she thinks about her father’s quiet praise as he showed her how to twist gold wire into things of beauty at the forge. She is not allowed to think about how gruff Uncle Caranthir’s voice had always gone so soft when he whispered stories to her to help her sleep. She is not allowed to think about how Uncle Celegorm had sworn to her when she was little that she didn’t have to be scared of the monsters under her bed, because he would always be there, and if the monsters wanted to get to her, they’d have to get through him first. 

She is not allowed to hope that her other uncles are alright. 

She is not allowed to look at that cursed, beautiful, life-giving, life stealing gem, and think, _Why couldn’t you just give it to them, don’t you know what they’re sworn to if they don’t get it, how could you let them fall to that darkness, how -_

They were the ones that chose to swear. She knows that. So she is not allowed to do these things. 

But she is allowed to tell Idril, late at night when she can’t see her cousin’s face and so that it will somehow feel like less of a betrayal, “They’ll come for it again.” 

“I know,” Idril whispers. 

She doesn’t think Idril is surprised when she’s on the next ship to Balar, where Gil-Galad had gone to help Cirdan secure one last stronghold. 

Her uncles will come for the gem. And she -

_Hates them, loves them, wants to help them, can’t bear to see what they’ve become, can’t bear not to see them again -_

She can’t be there when they do. 

Celebrian cries when she hears about Sirion. That is allowed, as long as she does not stop and ask herself which part about it is making her cry. 

Idril has long since sailed by then, and she is glad of that. She is glad, too, that Earendil was away. 

But Elwing was not, and the little twins she has never seen but has heard about were not, and some of her tears, at least, are for them. 

Except. 

Except there are rumors, that maybe, just maybe, they might not be dead.

Before the war is over, these rumors are proved true. Elrond and Elros arrive at Balar. She avoids them as much as she can, but Elrond is persistent, and he finds her at the worst possible moment: She is humming as she works, and the song she hums was composed by - 

_Kinslayer, murderer, greatest singer of the Noldor -_

Her uncle. 

But Elrond finishes the song with her in perfect harmony and says, a little wistfully, “I always loved that song,” as if there is nothing else behind it. 

He doesn’t say another word about her family - just music, and her work, and his own rueful admission to being useless in a smithy - and she decides, then and there, that he’s her favorite person on Balar. 

Still. 

She knows what her family has done to his, so she is - careful. Careful especially to assume that she is just seeing what she wants to see on Elrond’s face when someone else brings up her remaining uncles. 

They still don’t talk about them until after the final battle, after that last terrible scene, after the Silmarils, after one of the Feanorian’s remaining followers comes running to her and says that Maedhros has - 

After. 

After she breaks her own rules and cries for them, just for them. 

She tries to wipe her tears away when Elrond arrives at her hiding place, but he says, “Please don’t,” and that’s when she realizes that he is crying too. 

(Maybe. Maybe it’s okay to cry. Even with - Even now. Maybe it’s alright to grieve.) 

(And if Elrond wants to grieve too, maybe it’s okay if they do it together.) 

Eonwe announces that those who were not “leaders in the rebellion” can return to Valinor. Are encouraged too, even. 

Galadriel is told she is a leader of the rebellion, and she scornfully says she would not return to Valinor in any case, even if she was begged to go. 

(Finarfin does not look scornful. Finarfin looks like his heart is breaking.) 

Celebrian is told that she is also considered a leader of the rebellion, and she -

_Blood on her sword, and she hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, she hadn’t, and where is her mother, why is she lying so still -_

_Screaming at her father for what he’s done, so sure he’s wrong and yet not sure at all, even all these years later, if she was right -_

She thinks of the tattered train of still defiant Feanorians who pointedly follow her and only her now that Uncle Maedhros is - gone, and Uncle Maglor has vanished, and she cannot disagree. 

Eonwe also announces that the Peredhel will have to choose whether to be Men or Elves, and she is not surprised by the choice of either Elrond or Elros, though her heart breaks for both of them. 

She is also not surprised when Gil-Galad is then asked, even though almost everyone else is. She still remembers where he came from, even if rumor has obscured the truth for most. 

(She is not surprised by his decision.) 

The Second Age dawns - peacefully. Things are still difficult, but at least there is peace. 

Elros sails for Numenor with his Men. Galadriel and Celeborn build a new city and name it Eregion. They also have a daughter. They name her Finduilas.

Celebrian considers going with them. Things are not quite easy between her and Galadriel, but they are easier than they are between her and Gil-Galad, and at least she would be away from the court.

But-

But.

She stays.

It is some two hundred years before Gil-Galad turns to Elrond and says, “Is there a reason you’ve been staring at Celebrian so much?”

He is not sure what he is expecting when he asks the question. That Celebrian is ill, perhaps, and has confided in Elrond as a healer, and he is watching her more carefully in order to safeguard her health.

He is not expecting Elrond to blush.

“She’s our cousin,” he says, aghast. 

“Distantly,” Elrond points out, a little defensively.

“Our _Feanorian_ cousin.”

“So we’re even less related. Our distant half-cousin.”

That really hadn’t been what he meant by that comment. “Her whole house is cursed!”

“Technically,” Elrond says, “according to our laws and traditions, if we got married, she would be joining _my_ house, not the other way around. So she would be losing the curse instead of me gaining it.”

Gil-Galad is not sure how they got from what he had been very much hoping was just a crush to marriage.

“People will talk,” he warns. “Some already do.”

Elrond’s eyes go steely. “I don’t choose family based on what people gossip about.”

Gil-Galad can’t argue with that. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “What does she say to all this?”

Elrond looks away.

“You have said all this to her, haven’t you? _Haven’t you?_ No? So this is a recent thing? Maybe - “

Elrond's look is not encouraging. 

“Elrond, I don’t care if we’re immortal, if it’s been _two hundred years,_ it’s time to say something about it. To HER.”

So technically, Gil-Galad supposes, it’s a little bit his fault that there is, in fact, eventually a wedding.

There’s a very good singer at the wedding. Gil-Galad’s wedding present to both of them is that he very pointedly does not ask who it is.


End file.
